FIT Honors Graduates; Annette Green Talks Fragrance

The 25th anniversary celebration for the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) Cosmetics and Fragrance Marketing baccalaureate program honored notable graduates of the program, as well as Annette Green (right), president emeritus of The Fragrance Foundation and Peg Smith, the program’s first coordinator.

The event also honored Annette Green, president emeritus of The Fragrance Foundation (who was central to the development of the FIT program) and Peg Smith, the program’s first coordinator—the pair also presented the awards to the honored graduates. GCI sister publication Perfumer & Flavorist spoke with Green about the beauty and fragrance industries. It was in response to industry demand that the FIT Cosmetics and Fragrance marketing baccalaureate program was officially established in 1988, and it expanded its offerings further in 1993 by opening the Annette Green Fragrance Foundation Studio, a fragrance development laboratory.

Green explained her drive and passion for olfactive study dated back to working as a journalist for Scripps Howard and Hearst. “When I was hired as an editorial assistant, I was closest in age to teenagers—I was in my early 20s,” Green said. “They gave me a column to write to tell the druggists how to sell cosmetics and fragrances to teenagers. So I went to my local drugstore in Newark, and I asked [if I could] work there on Saturdays to find out why they are buying fragrance. Like they say, ‘It doesn’t make you younger, thinner or richer, so why do you wear it?’ Because it has a real psychological impact. And I had to convince the industry as well. It wasn’t easy.”

Eventually, Green created her own agency, Annette Green and Associates, which focused on fashion and beauty. Around that time, The Fragrance Foundation was nearly defunct. “They called me, they told me the whole story, but they said, ‘You can take it, but we won’t pay you,’” Green remembered. “And I said, ‘Well, I’m going to take it because I believe in it.’’”

Fragrance was only a half a million dollar industry then, Green said, but she took on the project because she loved fragrance and believed in its growth potential. “I always grew up with it,” she explained. “I had a mother who was an absolute dedicated addict to fragrance. And I just always wore fragrance. I couldn’t understand why American women didn’t wear fragrance in those days. That was really the challenge. Entering into the first year [as the Foundation’s president], I did something called ‘The Wardrobe of Fragrance’ [campaign], and that was just when women were starting to go to work, so it was perfect timing. I felt my job was to convince them that as you change your clothes to go to work, you also should change your fragrance. That was very important because at the time, companies only introduced one fragrance every five or six or 10 years. But once I got women convinced of this, companies got the message that they could introduce another fragrance and make it very popular, whether it was sporty fragrances, or business[like] fragrances, or sexy fragrances or fashionable fragrances. There’s no limit, obviously. That’s where it’s at today.”